Saturday, 11 November, marked the 99th anniversary of Polish independence. After successive partitions had awarded ever greater chunks of Polish territory to Russia, Austria, and Prussia; Poland ceased to exist as a political entity in 1795, to re-emerge as an independent state only in 1918. Independence day parade calls for white Europe To commemorate the…
Ever since the Islamic State group began to lose the territories it had so spectacularly conquered during 2013 and 2014, analysts and policy-makers in the West have warned of potential large-scale return movements of so-called ‘foreign fighters’. 40,000 ‘foreign fighters’ Although the term ‘foreign fighter’ is vacuous with respect to international law, it still permeates…
The elections to the National Council, the lower house of the Austrian Parliament on October 15, have marked a firm shift to the right in Austrian politics, particularly on matters of immigration, integration, and Islam. Sebastian Kurz headed for an ÖVP-FPÖ coalition After an electoral campaign dominated by at times vicious diatribes against Muslims and…
Germany’s Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, member of Angela Merkel’s CDU party, has sparked controversy by asserting that local authorities might be allowed to introduce a public holiday to commemorate an Islamic religious occasion. A regional Muslim holiday? De Maizière did not suggest a day off work at the national level but rather a regional…
It is now almost a year ago that Anis Amri, a Tunisian man who had arrived in Germany in 2015 and claimed to be a refugee, steered a lorry into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 and injuring 56. New report on intelligence failings Almost immediately after the event, growing evidence pointed to severe failings…
